This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us.
And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need
but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
1 John 3:16-18

One of the hardest lessons I ever learned was that of selfless giving.  It happened when I was in middle school. My mother used to make these shirts. She would cut patterns from fabric, iron them onto shirts, and paint outlines around them. She had this pretty candy cane pattern that she put on a sweat shirt for me. At a family Christmas dinner, my great-aunt’s mother was there, and she liked the shirt. (I just happened to wear her size.) My dad told me to give her the shirt. I refused, and I said that I had dropped food on it. (Yes, I lied to my father.) My mom gave her shirt to her aunt’s mother, and both of my parents were disappointed in me. My mother could have easily made me another shirt. My great-aunt’s mother was old, and she had arthritis and other issues that would not have allowed her to make the shirt herself. I could have been generous and given the shirt to a lady who loved it and probably needed it more than I did to make her holiday a little bit brighter.

My father has taught me many valuable lessons over the years, like this one. There are always going to be people in need. If you can’t give them the shirt off your back (not literally) then you try to find some way to help them. He taught me that not everyone is as blessed as I am or could possibly be.

Jesus gave in the same way, but He took it to a bigger need—the biggest need we would ever have. We needed someone to save us from our sin and to bring us back to God. Jesus knew our need before He came here. He saw it while He was walking here on Earth. He set the perfect example of love by sacrificing Himself on the Cross so that we could go to Heaven. Yes, Jesus preached love, but He also showed it through His actions here on Earth and on the Cross.

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Dear Heavenly Father: Thank You for showing Your love to a people who most desperately needed it. You are the perfect example of showing love through action. May we also model that example. In Jesus’ name, Amen.